Back Home...Hoping and Praying

It is 2215 on Sunday, Jul 28, and we arrived safely back to Kathleen, GA after a total of 12 hours in travel (that 1 hour break at Red Robin was great!!) We are thankful for safe miles on the road and now are settling back in to our homestead. It's quiet here, as Nash and Teebo are still staying at Arlene's...we'll pick those two little bubbas up tomorrow afternoon and I am sure they will be happy to see us!

Now back at home, we enter what is without a doubt one of the toughest and most difficult times in this process....the 2-week wait. For millions of people, this wait is simply disguised by the daily event of life and only garners notice when the wife is "late". But for us and our fellow fertility-challenged couples, it is an agonizing time of wondering whether "it worked" or not. In IVF, there is no guessing as to whether fertilization was successful or whether there are little embryos present in the body with the potential to implant....."successful" cycles are completed that way. It's a time when knowledge is not necessarily power or "positive", because there is up to two weeks where positive represents a dream or miracle far more often than it represents a couple's state of mind or feelings. It's a time when you hope and pray that good indications translate into positive signs; it's a time when you are reminded once again that it's a God thing...there is nothing we or any person of medicine can do to make it happen....collectively, we simply do our best and trust that God will take care of the rest according to the plan He has for us. While faith and trust our very powerful entities, they are also very testing in times like these...when the answers you so long for seem so far away; the reality is that this "waiting game" culminates with a test that will make a miracle or break a hope....it can amaze two lives or just as quickly shatter two hearts. We simply hope like Jeremiah that an angel of His needs is entrusted to our care...a husband and a wife yearning to be a Mom and a Dad.

Shady Grove does things a little different with the Beta (blood pregnancy test) than Walter Reed does in that they wait longer; so it will be on day 18 this time around rather than day 14 (as it was with WR). There is always the option of an HPT (home pregnancy test) earlier than the Beta, but that carries it's own tough emotions and reality. So according to the calendar, the Beta for this cycle will be on Friday, 8 Aug (the day before our 5th wedding anniversary :-) ) What an extra-special gift that would be...it would be the best ever!